Game Jam Results
Overall Rating
Yup, the bronze medal is correct! The Planet Recovery Force submission for the GameDevcember 2021 Game Jam came in 3rd overall place! Honestly this is better than I was even expecting for this game. There were not many submission in the game jam (around 30), but I am incredibly proud of the work I put into this game, and overwhelmed with excitement in grabbing 3rd overall place. I want to sincerely thank everyone who played my game and who submitted a review of the game before the deadline.
This is the first time I have made the "podium" so to speak in a game jam, and I hope it isn't my last time! This was such a fun experience, and honestly the community of game developers in this jam were very helpful and fun to collaborate with. Although I did receive the bronze medal place for this game, there was a lot of incredible constructive feedback I received for the game. While I most likely wont be going back and updating the game, there were a few key things people pointed out that I wanted to highlight.
Feedback
Overall it seemed everyone enjoyed the gameplay loop of flying around the planet, shooting seeds, and blowing up the space beetles. I was extremely happy that people felt the sound effects really helped make the game feel alive. This is exactly what I was going for, and will be sure to continue to focus on adding relevant sound effects in my future games. This was also my first kinetic and action oriented game and it was great to see that people had fun playing this game. This sounds so obvious, but I didn't realize how important and hard it is to make your game fun. It can be so easy to be lost in getting the game to work as you imagine it in your head, but it is even more important to stop and play test your game to ensure it is actually fun. In this games case, I made sure to play my game as often as I could, and even had my fiance play the game to receive constant feedback. However, there were some areas of feedback I want to improve on in future titles as well.
Some constructive criticisms I received was that there were some aspects of the game that weren't very clear. Specifically, people were unsure what the portals were. They then spent time flying around trying to go in them, but nothing happened. I could have made this a bit more clear by having a more traditional tutorial section explaining what was happening. Additionally, people felt the bugs overwhelmed the player to quickly and should have been a one hit kill. After playing the game some more I 100% agree. The final plant state of the game is a bit chaotic (not in a good way). They also mentioned that the trees shouldn't have absorbed the bullets. Again, this is something I agree with. It makes the game harder than it should be and there is no feedback to the player that the trees will block shots. Finally, I would have liked to make it more clear when a tree is rooted and won't move. When all the trees are growing it can be confusing which trees you don't need to care about protecting.
With this feedback, I feel really great about what I will want to remember when creating my next game. Most importantly, some sort of tutorial experience for the player to learn how to play the game will be most important. I have struggled with this in the past, and it seems that is one of the main areas I need to spend more time on to ensure players are able to fully enjoy the games I create.
Closing out Game #4
Thanks again to everyone in the GameDevcember jam who played, reviewed, and provided feedback for my Planet Recovery Force game jam submission. It was a blast developing this game, and even greater treat that it made 3rd place overall. To anyone reading these devlog posts, thank you! I hope you enjoy them, and I look forward to closing out the last two and providing updates to you on those as I progress. I wish everyone a happy 2022 and look forward to a year of more game development. Thank you!